Physician-Assisted Suicide

Free Inquiry magazine does not endorse political candidates nor political parties. We recognize the wide diversity of political viewpoints among secular humanists. We do, however, take positions concerning two vital issues: first, we support humanist ethical principles on grounds independent of religion; and second, we defend the separation of church and state. By both these …

Religious people claiming they’re the victims of excessive secular-ism generally have about as much credibility as conservatives complaining about the liberal media. America has only a subculture of disbelief, inhabited by a small, maligned minority who probably have less influence on law and policy than marginalized left-wing magazines. Aspiring theocrats, like Supreme Court Justice Antonin …

In his book A Charge to Keep, George W. Bush writes of his decision to “recommit my heart to Jesus Christ.” He traces it to a walk along the beach in Maine with the Christian evangelist Billy Graham. Conversing with Graham, Bush was “humbled to learn that God had sent His Son to die for …

Perhaps the most amazing feature of reality we have encountered so far is ourselves. We are perplexing, too, for what else in nature reflects on itself, criticizes and commends, blames and praises its own kind, does good and evil and the whole gamut in-between, creates and destroys to unheard-of degrees, and then debates endlessly whether …

Bill Dembski, one of the leading proponents of modern intelligent design “theory,” is an interesting animal. But before turning to him, I should explain why I am telling readers of a freethought magazine about the latest attempt by religiously inspired intellectuals to advance their pseudo-scientific agenda. Surely few readers of Free InquIry would give much …

Who could imagine the people of a great democracy turning over the right to harass and propagandize themselves on their own public airwaves to a handful of gigantic corporations and the billionaire press lords who control those corporations? But that is what we have done. The media are busily creating a mob-like democracy—feeding a mass …

Throughout our history, the Bill of Rights has been often held in contempt by our government—witness the 1798 Alien and Sedition Acts; Abraham Lincoln’s suspension of habeas corpus and the mass jailing of opponents of his policies during the Civil War; Woodrow Wilson’s near-extinction of the First Amendment during the First World War; the “Red …

Hey, how about us! Over here, yeah, here we are. And what do we want? What did Johnny Rocco want in Key Largo, baby? More. More. That’s right, more! We want more exposure, more access, more product! In the name of equal time, fairness, and that much-prized, Hollywood-embraced concept of diversity. Our time has come, …

Free Inquiry readers may pause to read the “Affirmations of Humanism: A Statement of Principles” on the inside cover of the magazine. To a secular humanist, these principles seem so logical, so right, so crucial. Yet, there is one archetypal political philosophy that is anathema to almost all of these principles. It is fascism. And …

The ongoing scandal of Catholic pedophile priests has exposed the privileged position organized religion undeservedly retains in the twenty-first century. Despite the glar-ing hypocrisy of presumptive moral exemplars violating the most vulnerable of victims, the Catholic Church’s misdeeds have not met the level of outrage, and the demands for action, that would be expected if …

Suicide and the ‘New Prohibitionists’ This issue’s special section on physician-assisted suicide puts me in mind of a larger issue: suicide, period. While suicide has never been exactly popular, a new assault on our right to suicide is brewing. It’s something secular humanists ought to resist. Not long ago, the right to suicide and the …

The Center for Inquiry is committed to the use of science, reason, and freedom of inquiry in all areas of human endeavor. But is this enough? There is an abundance of experts in modern society in virtually all fields of human endeavor, and these include hundreds, no doubt thousands, of disciplines and fields—from algebra and …

PHYSICIAN-ASSISTED SUICIDE, PRO AND CONPHYSICIAN-ASSISTED SUICIDE, PRO AND CON Why Cling To A Life Without Savor? I am not in a hurry to emulate those old Eskimos set adrift on ice floes, nor do I envy folks who retire only to disappear into the couch. Born in 1930, I’ve already outlived my life expectancy, but …

PHYSICIAN-ASSISTED SUICIDE, PRO AND CONPHYSICIAN-ASSISTED SUICIDE, PRO AND CON About Assisted Suicide Secular humanist believers in assisted suicide/ euthanasia routinely dismiss opponents as religious zealots who are driven by a sectarian desire to impose Christianity on society. In this view, people like me care little about the right to personal autonomy and even less about …

PHYSICIAN-ASSISTED SUICIDE, PRO AND CONPHYSICIAN-ASSISTED SUICIDE, PRO AND CON Euthanasia And Physician-Assisted Suicide There are two major reasons to oppose euthanasia. One is based on principle: it is wrong for one human to intentionally kill another (except in justified self-defense, or in the defense of others). The other reason is utilitarian: the harms and risks …

PHYSICIAN-ASSISTED SUICIDE, PRO AND CONPHYSICIAN-ASSISTED SUICIDE, PRO AND CON Physician-Assisted Suicide In early 1997, the medical community awaited the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Vacco v. Quill. Ultimately, the high court would overturn this suit, in which doctors and patients had sought to overturn New York’s law prohibiting physician-assisted suicide. But it was fascinating to …

Beginning in this issue, Free InquIry will publish a series of articles focusing on women and their encounters with religion. We will hear from—and about—women who have shaped religion, who have opposed religion, who have been victimized by religion, and who have advocated, often fiercely, for their beliefs and disbeliefs. In this issue, writer Shari …

The Life And Death Of Cassie Bernall Reverend George Kristen of West Bowles Community Church in Littleton, Colorado, described Cassie Bernall’s funeral as a “graduation ceremony,” a day “to celebrate”; Minister Dave McPherson of the same congregation likened the service to “a wedding.”1 Their opprobrious remarks remind me of a man who, in a botched …

Reassessing Madalyn Murray O’hair The visit of Madalyn Murray O’Hair, her son Jon, and adopted granddaughter Robyn to New Zealand in 1982 had an immediate effect on the humanist movement in that country. The three spoke at Rationalist House, headquarters of the New Zealand Rationalist Association, attracting the largest audience in the association’s history. Their …

The Saint That Never Was “The saint that never was” may sound like the title of a cheap thriller of the forties, something from the pen of Leslie Charteris or G.K Chesterton. But it’s more like a modern-day melodrama. It’s the story of how the Catholic Church, just to test its strength, tried to show …

The Myths of Jesus’ Childhood No Account In Nazareth The earliest known Gospel, Mark, has no tale to tell of Jesus before his baptism as an adult. There is nothing about a miraculous conception or birth, no angelic annunciation, no child prodigy stories such as we find in the other New Testament Gospels. Considered as …

The CFI Libraries Keep Growing When I began working at the Center for Inquiry Libraries back in 1996, I was not completely sure what freethought was. I had a few notions, but I had never read a formal definition. I discovered a possible reason that I didn’t know much about freethought in an article that …

Generations from now, historians may look back on our era and marvel at the fact that so many people still literally believed in the articles of faith undergirding the major Western religions. How, they might ask, was it possible that the unbelievable could still be believed by so many at a time when so much …

The New Bioethics It doesn’t make sense to me that members of the Religious Right are opposed to human embryonic stem cell research (“The New Bioethics,” FI, Winter 2002/03). Christians should embrace this practice wholeheartedly. As soon as the embryo is sacrificed for his cells, his soul, being sinless, goes straight to heaven, with no …

Denying Evolution: Creationism, Scientism, and the Nature of Science, by Massimo Pigliucci (Sunderland, Mass.: Sinauer Associates Inc., 2002, ISBN 0-87893-659-9) 275 pp., Paperback $24.95. Denying Evolution is a great book and Massimo Pigliucci’s finest work to date. The reader might be forgiven for asking, Why yet another book on the evolution-creationism controversy? In the words …

When Religion Becomes Evil, by Charles Kimball (San Francisco: HarperCollins Publishers, 2002, ISBN 0-06–050653-9) 240 pp., including Notes and Selected Bibliography. Cloth $21.95. It seems to come as a perennial surprise to many that religious faith gives rise to terrible beliefs and acts. The lessons of human history do not seem to dispel the widely …

How to Be an Atheist: An Inaugural Lecture Given in the University of Cambridge 12 October 2001, by Denys Turner (Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press, 2002, ISBN 0 521 52632) 39 pp. Paper $12. This book presents Denys Turner’s inaugural lecture upon becoming Norris-Hulse Professor of Divinity at Cambridge University. It is of interest …

Unmarried to Each Other: The Essential Guide to Living Together as an Unmarried Couple, by Dorian Solot and Marshall Miller (New York: Marlowe and Company, 2002, ISBN 1-56924–566-5) 320 pp. Paper $15.95. The trouble started when Dorian Solot and Marshall Miller moved in together. First Solot couldn’t get Miller on her workplace’s health insurance because …

SIDE / LINES There Are Limits—Not all those who wish to read from the Bible are welcome at West Virginia’s Shepherd College. When forty-nine-year-old Barbara Marie Harm ison wanted to do just that, campus police told her she needed permission from the student affairs department. She may have forgot to tell them she planned to …

Church-State Update tracks continuing developments in important federal, state, and local church-state issues. Each item is preceded by an up arrow () or a down arrow (¸), based on the story’s implications for separation of church and state and the rights of the nonreligious. Washington Wire . . .Bush Orders Faith­Based Initia­tive. After two years …

In this new column, Bill Cooke comments on developments of concern to humanists worldwide. A longtime New Zealand humanist activist, Cooke is now a senior editor of Free Inquiry and director of the Center for Inquiry’s new Commission for Transnational Cooperation —eds. The death sentence against Hashem Aghajari, a reformist and an academic at Modarres …

We can draw energy, inspiration, and strategies from the gadfly who launched the Western tradition of independent thinking 2,500 years ago. As humanists, it is natural for us to look to our fellow human beings for the values and motivation to become all we are capable of being. As we strive to make the most …

Several readers objected to Taner Edis’s discussion of randomness in his “An Accidental World” (FI, Science and Religion, Fall 2002). Quantum randomness may be counterintuitive, but it isn’t just a good idea, it’s the law. We invited Edis to expound further on the admittedly quizzical quantum randomness. —eds. Physics can get weird, so everyone who …

Will secular humanists ever succeed in organizing so as to wield political influence in our nation’s capital? Once again, we’re going to try. In Washington, D.C., from April 11 to 13, the Council for Secular Humanism will host a national conference entitled “One Nation Without God? Secularism, Society, and Justice.” Session topics include religious-political extremism, …

In 1988, fundamentalist Christians in several nations vented rage and violence because a movie, The Last Temptation of Christ, portrayed Jesus as a wavering human who lusted for the prostitute Mary Magdalene. A Paris theater showing the film was firebombed, sending thirteen people to hospitals. Another, at Besancon, France, suffered a similar attack. Tear gas …

A Discussion Chris: Hello, you don’t believe in anything. Are you an atheist? Agnes: Well no, I am a polytheist. I think atheist sounds so negative. C.: Well, at least you believe in some sort of god. But isn’t polytheism kind of primitive? We all know that the concept of a single almighty god, who is …